PreparationEdit

First and foremost, we'll take it as read that you have a working homebrew or MacPorts installation.

Second, if you need ALAC support, for homebrew you'll need to

brew install ffmpeg

or for MacPorts

port install ffmpeg

and add the following line to the args list of the mpd Formula (accessed with `brew edit mpd' or `port edit mpd' )

args << "--enable-ffmpeg" if ARGV.include?("--ffmpeg")

Alternatively, you can add ffmpeg to the dependency list and then add to `--enable-ffmpeg' to the arg list.

Installation and basic configurationEdit

brew install mpd

Then create a file called ~/.mpdconf and add the following:

music_directory         "~/Music"
playlist_directory              "~/.mpd/playlists"
db_file                 "~/.mpd/database"
pid_file                        "~/.mpd/pid"
state_file              "~/.mpd/state"
sticker_file                    "~/.mpd/sticker.sql"
port                            "6600"
auto_update     "yes"
audio_output {
        type            "osx"
        name            "My Mac Device"
        mixer_type      "software"
}

Alter values as you prefer them. Consult the mpdconf.example for further options.

Now,

mkdir ~/.mpd
mkdir ~/.mpd/playlists
touch ~/.mpd/database

The last line is not strictly necessary, but may help if you're getting database errors.

You should now be able to simply run mpd and connect to it with the client of your choice.

Scrobbling with mpdasEdit

brew install mpdas

Then create the file ~/.mpdasrc, and add the following lines:

username = my_lastfm_username
password = 02a264fb6696ea24d264d56724642d6b

The password field is the md5 hash of your password.

md5 -s my_lastfm_password

Now start up mpdas as a daemon with your config file.

mpdas -d -c ~/.mpdasrc

And you're done.